Viewpoint：Air-Conditioning Will Be the End of Us

　　Adapted from Eric Klinenberg, “Viewpoint: air-conditioning will be the end of us”©2013 by TIME. Originally published July 17, 2013.

　　Earlier this week, as the temperature in New York City hit the upper 90s and the heat index topped 100, my utility provider issued a heat alert and advised customers to use air-conditioning “wisely.” It was a nice, polite gesture but also an utterly ineffectual one. After all, despite our other green tendencies, most Americans still believe that the wise way to use air conditioners is to crank them up, cooling down every room in the house — or even better, relax in the cold blasts of a movie theater or shopping mall, where someone else pays the bills. Today Americans use twice as much energy for air-conditioning as we did 20 years ago, and more than the rest of the world’s nations combined. As a climate-change adaptation strategy, this is as dumb as it gets.（余下部分可参见原文）

　　解析：In the article, “viewpoint: Air Conditioning Will Be the End of Us” by Eric Klinenberg, he makes an argument claiming that Americas need to greatly reduce their reliance on air-conditioning. Strategies mainly used in this passage are compare and contrast. Eric’s overall purpose in writing this article is to draw attention towards the America’s severe climate issues, with primary audience being every single concerned citizen.

　　Eric starts his article off by comparing and contrasting the energy use today and that in the past. In telling this, the two are put together to make comparison and get the result “twice as much as the energy…for 20 years ago”. Moreover, in order to show audience the enormous scale of energy consumption, he compares the figure in America to the accumulation of other countries and concludes “more than the rest…”. Although there is no specific statistics, audience still can get a more concrete idea of the seriousness in the USA. With help of contrast, Eric is able to emphasize his argument effectively that citizens do overuse the energy. Via this, audience can be easily convinced the following alert on what a small behavior in daily life has cost huge amount of energy and Eric successfully draw people’s attention and providing the baseline to conduct the coming 

discussion on risks.【分析中侧重对效果的分析，要注意对读者的感受描写】

　　划重点！！！本文关键论证手法：compare and contrast

　　同学们会发现compare与contrast同属于比较，但是分别有不同的比较重点。compare更侧重类比，即比较两者之间的相似之处，找到两者的共同点。而contrast则更加侧重比不同，找出两者的不同之处。这两项涉及到的对象范围比较广，可以是人/事件/动物/物品等。所以在阅读文本中同学们要注意将对比这一手法扩展到不同的内容上。

　　需要同学们注意的是除了具体的物体之间形成比较，作者有时对通过段落来进行比较，因此在读到段落时也要注意去发现是否有利用这个技巧。

　　作者主要通过两种方式来进行比较：subject-by-subject and point-by-point.

　　√  subject-by-subject这一方式更强调各自的特点，再对应进行比较Subject A: point A1, point A2, point A3Subject B: point B1, point B2, point B3.

　　√  In the pattern of point-by-point 这一方式更强调同一内容下的比较Point1: SubjectA1, SubjectB1Point2: SubjectA2, SubjectB2Point3: SubjectA3, SubjectB3.

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